Production of hook plates and hooks for temporary binders



Nov. 26, 1 929. c. D. TRUSSELL 1,736,808

PRODUCTION OF HOOK PLATES AND HOOKS FOR TEMPORARY BINDERS Filed 'se t.15. 1927 INVENTOR M .%w

By Attorneys, amm,h rw Patented Nov. 26, 1929 UNITED STATES PATENT,ormca PRODUCTION 0] BOOK PLATES AND BOOKS FOR TEMPORARY IBINDEBBApplication filed September 15, 1927. Serial No. 219,710.

This invention relates to temporary binders of the nature of loose-leafbooks or co-called rin binders. A common construction for sue books isto provide divided rings consisting of half-rings or hooks entering themarginal perforations of the sheets and which, when closed together,constitute com plete rings. Such half rings or prongs have commonl beenapplied to plates called ring plates or ook plates. These plates havebeen mounted with a rocking engagement in connection with a springmember adapted to cause the mating hooks or half rings, when closed, toremain pressed closely together, and when opened, to remain open. Thehooks or half-rings have in some instances been riveted or otherwisefastened to such plates, while in other cases they have been formedintegrally with the plates. The latter construction has the advantage ofsaving the labor incident to riveting or swaging the hooks and platestogether, but it has heretofore required such a series of diflicultoperations as to neutralize that advantage, with the result that the oldconstruction of separate hooks riveted or swaged to the plates has beenthe most common one.

The present invention provides an improved means for the construction ofring plates having integral half rings or books. An instance of ringplates so constructed is found in my Patent N 0. 1,141,157, dated June1, 1915. According to the method of said patent the plates are stampedout of sheet or plate metal with the hooks or prongs of exaggeratedwidth, and they are then swaged y transverse pressure into an ellipticalcrosssection and bent to a semi-circular form. The present inventionprovides an improved method designed for greater economy in manufacture.

According to the present invention a stock plate or bar is formed byrolling, extfusion, or other means, having thinner marginal portions toform the plates, and a thicker middle zone to form the books; this isthen punched to cut out scrap from the middle zone, leaving the twomarginal plates each with thickened fingers projecting from them; andthese fingers are then rounded by striking between dies, and the fingersare then bent up into the semi-circular form of the half rings or hooks.

he respective plates are then cut off to appropriate len th and arefitted together to ring the half rings into coincidence to form completerings, being then fitted to the s ring plate or back plate requisite tothe ring indmg mechanism.

he invention will be described in its preferred form with reference tothe accompanying drawings, wherein F1gure 1 is a transverse section ofthe pre viously formed plate or bar.

Fig. 2 is a plan thereof showing it partially punched out to form thefingers projecting from the respective plates.

Fig. 3 shows a fragment of one of the plates after the fingers have beenstruck up for rounding their surfaces.

Fig. 4 being an edge view thereof.

. Figs. 5 and 6 are corresponding views showmg a different cross-sectionof finger.

Fig. 7 is a transverse section showing the finger bent into the curvedform of the half ring or hook.

Fig. 8 is an edge view of the ring plate having such bent-up half-ringsor hooks.

Fig.9 is a plan of two such ring plates turned oppositely to theiroriginal position and brought together with the books or half rings inopen opposed position.

Fig. 10 is a transverse section of the mating hooks forming a completering, as assembled in relation to a spring back plate.

Fig. 11 is a plan of Fig. 10.

Fig. 12 is a plan of the scrap punched out from Fig. 2. 7

Referring to Figure 1, the bar or stock plate A is a plate of steel orother suitable metal, rolled, extruded, or otherwise formed of thecross-section shown, comprising marginal portions B B and a middle zoneC. The flanking portions B B are of the thickness and width of the plateon which the hooks or half rings are to be carried. The middle zone C isof greater thickness corresponding to that of the half rings, and beingeither equal in thickness thereto or of a thickness sufficientlyapproaching this, so that the rounded half rings may be struck up therefrom.

The bar A is first passed through a selffeeding punching press which ateach stroke cuts out a blank such that the succession of punchingstrokes result in severing the marginal flanking portions B B intoseparate plates with fingers rojecting from them, as shown in Fig. 2. T1e punch and die may be of such shape as to punch out blanks of theoutline shown in Fig. 12, these corresponding to the spaces a: m (Fig.2) which are left after the punching operations: When the entire bar orstock strip, A has been thus punched, the plates B B are completelysevered and are then ready for the next 0 eration.

Each of the plates is tlien passed through another punching press whichrounds the fingers D D in cross-section. This rounding may be either asshown in Fig. 4, or as shown in Fig. 6, the latter requiring a somewhatgreater thickness of the middle zone C of the plate. After this roundingoperation the late or blank appears as in Fig. 3 or Fig. 5.

y the same press stroke a corrugation E may advantageously be struck upin the plate opposite each finger, as shown in Fig. 3,-or thiscorrugation may be of the form shown at E in Fig. 5.

The next operation is bending up the straight fingers D D form, as shownin Fig. 7. This is performed in a suitable punching press which may bestoperate stroke by stroke with an intermittent automatic feed. In thisbendingup operation some weakness might develop at the mounting of eachof the hooks or half rings on the plate, since the plate is thinner thanthe hooks and to afford greater strength at this point is the functionof the corrugations E E, or E, which form a sort of corrugated bridge orbrace. In Fig. 7 the bent-up hooks are lettered d, the hook plate is b,and the corrugated brace is e.

The hook plate thus formed, shown in Figs. 7 and 8 with its hooksintegral therewith, may be made of the length of the original stock bar,and he then cut off into shorter lengths corresponding to that requiredfor the number of rings in any given ring binder (say six or seven, forexample).

Two of the plates thus cut tolength are then placed together, so thatthe edges of the plates which were the outer edges of the bar, arebrought together, or nearly together, and the ends of the hooks arebrought into mating coincidence, as shown in Fig. 9. They are then readyfor assembling as parts of the ring binder mechanism, which may beconstructed in the manner shown in Fig. 10, where the inner edges of theplates b b have a rocking engagement and their outer edges are heldbetween hooked flanges on a spring back plate f, this being a common andwellunderstood construction.

into nearly semi-circular The described method thus produces both hookplates, and their respective hooks, from one bar, providing heaviermetal for the hooks and affording a minimum of waste as compared withpunching out each hook plate with its projecting fingers from a separatebar or stock late. Thus a saving of metal is efl'ecte e ualapproximately to the width of the thic ened zone C." The variousoperations are automatic punching or swaging press operations, the stripor plate being automatically fed forward at each operation a distanceequal to the spacing of the rings.

It is advantageous in ring book construction to provide numerous ringsengaging an equal number of perforations in the loose leaves, in orderto minimize the liabilit of tearing the paper at its perforations, whichis liable to occur when only two or three rings are provided. Heretoforean obstacle to the making of loose-leaf books with such numerous ringshas been the cost of mounting the hooks or half rings on the rin plates.This difficulty is greatly diminished by the present invention.

In the description thus far given I have made no reference to anyparticular means for affording a rocking connection between the inneredges of the assembled ring plates, or for limiting the opening movementof the rings. Several different constructions are known in the art foraccomplishing such purpose. One such construction is shown in my saidPatent No. 1,141,157, wherein the plates have a knife edge contact attheir abutting edges and are formed with lugs stamped out and projectingfrom each plate beneath the other to limit their upward movements duringthe opening)of the rings. A similar construction may e providedaccording to the present invention by suitably shaping the outermarginal edges of the stock bar or plate A and by performing cutting andbending operations upon these outer edges, which operations may beaccomplished separately or during the same strokes of the press whichperform the original punching and later swaging. These are details whichare not essential to the present invention. Constructions are known inthe art which require no such preparation of the ring plates to causethem to mutually coact to limit the opening ring movement, and any ofsuch constructions may be applied in connection with the presentinvention.

The operations herein set forth may be more or less modified, as will beunderstood by those skilled in the art, without departing from theessentials of the present invention as defined in the claims.

What I claim is 1. The method of making integral hookplates and hooksfor loose-leaf binders, consisting in (1) producing a flat bar of a formhaving thin margins of the gauge of the plates and a thicker mlilddlezonefotfh a 1thignesscorre ondmg' tot e u o e 00 (2) punch iiig outportionsori such bar at its middle zone to leave alternated fingersprojecting from each marginal plate toward the other, and (3) bendingthe fingers up into curved form over the respective plates to formhooks.

2. The method of claim 1, with the additional step of assembling theplates of a air with their edges which were the outer es of the bar intorocking relation with each other with their hooks 0 posite one another,so that their ends may ahut to form binding rings. 1 v

3. The method of claim -1, with the additional step after such punchingof swaging ghe fingers to any appropriate cross-sectional orm.

4. The method of claim 1, with the additional step of corrugating thefingers adjacent their junction with the plate to impart added stiffnessthereto.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto signed my name.

CLARENCE D. TRUSSELL.

